“All mankind is running to monograms this year,” wrote the New York Times Style section in June, 1902 (click for the fin-de-si‚àö¬Æcle puff piece.) Apparently, monograms were the pants or ties of the age. Since then, what originated with the crests of kings became a not-so-subtle talisman of status more than style, practical in white-collar and dry-cleaning Post-War days and was eventually almost extinguished by the rise of the logo. Granted, monograms have been mostly the provenance of oil-executives since the Patrick Bateman era, but that’s no reason not to dapple in initialization…
